A Bright Spin on Everydayness

Thursday night, I have girlfriends over to help me make wedding projects and we're preparing dinner before that, cooking and printing out things to cut and paste, I have my hands in food and papers. Jim says, "your phone is ringing, it's Matt." And because my hands are dirty he answers and hands it over while I wipe them; he's on the way to play at the Wiltern in LA, driving into my old 'hood, he says, while I saute chicken in Anchorage.

We catch up a bit about this and that. Yes, he'll play the Nick Drake song we requested at the wedding, and I say I'll send some chords. We talk about him touring with The National and he asks which are my favorite tracks from their new album which I think is called "Hot Lavender." He laughs, says, "You mean 'High Violet'," oh yeah. I say I'll have to listen again, because you know me, I never remember track names, only certain lyrics. I like that one about "I don't wanna get over you..." I think that's that one, I think, watching Jim talking to, laughing with our friends in the kitchen, in his jeans and blue sweatshirt, as easy as everything, as permanent as anything you want for the rest of your life.

A couple days later I send those chords I promised and I also relisten to the new album and remember my favorite track - "Sorrow" - it's the one upon hearing it for the first time that wrenched me, was immediately familiar for some reason. Heard again though, and a few more times after that, it's a song about being sad for a long time and persisting in sadness as a habit, but not wanting to stay there or to persist in sad anymore. It's about knowing and understanding the sad that could happen again if you lost someone you loved, but refusing to get there ever again - "I don't wanna get over you" - or something like persisting, keeping. Then the music is this epic guitar and driving drumbeat plus a "ooh-aah" choir in the background, it's all building up right to the very end when violins come in just barely. All in all it adds up to hope, a wish to never have to get over loving someone.

That's why I adore The National, and what I wrote Matt was that I love them for putting this bright spin on everydayness, making something epic out of the mundane, elevating things like hanging out in your apartment, feeling awkward at a party, into feats of everyman heroism and endearing confessionals. So when I write or tell about wedding, I can let myself feel like a little bit of a heroine - simply for doing it all, for reflecting about it, giving it its due space in written. Especially when I've got friends over and calling to help me realize ideas.